


Tidal Forces

by Ias



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Banshee Lydia Martin, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Transformation, Werewolf Allison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-27
Updated: 2013-10-27
Packaged: 2017-12-30 15:30:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1020345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ias/pseuds/Ias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first full moon is always the hardest. Lydia knows from experience.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tidal Forces

"Take the towel off the window." Allison had promised herself she wouldn't beg, but it's impossible to keep the pleading edge out of her voice. Not with the feeling surging through her body, or the look on Lydia's face as she kneels a few feet away. Her tights have a run in them from the knee up past the edge of her skirt, and her hair frizzes out around her head like a halo. Details hammer into Allison's brain like specs of hail.

Lydia tilts her head forward meaningfully.

"Are you sure?" she asks. Allison nods, the feeling like a cup of water being flipped and then replaced before a drop could spill. Sloshing. She feels like she's sloshing, every time she moves. But even worse than that is the ache, something in the fibers of her bones and muscles, the follicles of her skin, which reaches out to what's behind that strip of cloth. There's no denying it. If she waits much longer she'll be torn out of her skin. More than anything she wants to stay here in the darkness and wait for it to pass, but it doesn't work that way. Trial by fire. A sort of forging, maybe. Or just being burned alive.

Lydia pauses, her hand on the cloth and her eyes trained on Allison. There's a moment for them to brace themselves, as if it could help. The curtain tears back with a ripple of movement and sound. White light spills out onto the floor strips the color from the basement walls, rising towards them like something alive. The pain that hits her is worse than dying, and it splits her open like a gutted fish. She's pouring out, and the world is pouring into her.

"Just breathe with me." Words seem to be coming from far away, yet suddenly closer. It's getting harder and harder to hear them. Not to hear, but to understand. Air thick and syrupy, and then sharp--as sharp as the pain stabbing into Allison's skin, sharp as her nails biting into her palms and the light biting into her eyes. In the basement of this house there's only one window, yet the moonlight falling through it is as white-hot as a brand. The voice is still there, though. She clings to it like a rock as the waves slam into her back.

A pair of soft hands reach up to cup the sides of her face, and then there's Lydia. Her hair and face washed out in the white light, red turned to browns and greys, her skin lit up like a beacon. Her thumbs swipe under Allison's eyes. It takes her a while to realize Lydia's wiping away her tears.

"Breathe," Lydia commands. Her lips pucker, a demonstration, and Allison tries her best to mimic the rise and fall of her chest, the hiss of air past her teeth which is louder than she could imagine. Not much time left now. The air was fueling a fire.

"I can't do this," Allison says, in a voice that isn't hers. It warbles deep in her throat, chokes itself, comes tearing out anyways.

"You can," Lydia says firmly. "Don't make excuses. You're stronger than all of them."

"No," Allison moans. She's full of flies, and heavy as mud.

"Hey." Lydia's fingers grip her chin for a minute. "No backtalk. I'm a genius, remember? I know these things." Lydia lets Allison's head fall. Her eyes flutter closed, a relief from the pounding agony building in her head. It'll be back. Tonight's the full moon, and she can't run from it forever.

"You should get out of here," she says in a voice more like her own. "I don't know how much longer I can keep a handle on this."

"I'm not going anywhere." Lydia's hand is a steady, gentle pressure on the back of Allison's head. Stroking her hair. It's soothing. It's not enough.

"At least use the chains," Allison pleads, opening her eyes to risk a desperate glance at Lydia. "Please, Lydia. Even Scott lost control on his first night."

After a moment, Lydia looks away. There's a rattle of metal off to the side, and she hoists up a heavy length of chain. It glints evilly in the light. In her other hand is the lock.

"Hold them out, then," she says. Allison blithely complies, shifting so her back is pressed to the wall with her legs tucked to the side, her hands lying in Lydia's lap. The metal is searingly cold on her skin; Lydia rests her fingers over it, lending her warmth.

"Legs too," Allison says thickly. Her body isn't moving the way she wants it to anymore. Her heart beats too fast.

Lydia shoots her a look, but the chains wind around Allison's ankles a minute later. Lydia sits back and watches her with a look on her face that Allison wouldn't be able to read even if she wasn't currently experiencing the most physical pain she had felt in her life. Her bones were melting in her skin, her muscles searing, her skin crisping from the inside.The Bite is a distant memory, obliterated by pain.

"I remember what it felt like." Lydia's voice, no more than a murmur, but to Allison it's as loud as a shout. "When Peter attacked me, when I was in the hospital... The pain was unbearable, when I was unconscious. I thought I was in hell." She laughs. "I don't even believe in hell, or I didn't, but I knew that whatever was happening was meant to punish me." Allison's consciousness is a slippery ledge she clings to with all her concentration. She has to hear this.

"It stopped, though," Lydia says after a pause. "I got better. Maybe not in the same way you will. It's different for everyone, or so they say. I never made the change."Her hands rub over Allison's wrists, trailing delicate circles on the skin there. Near the cold chain, her fingertips are as hot as coals. Allison doesn't think of pulling away. She closes her eyes again. This time it doesn't help.

"I hurt," she manages eventually. Without any particular sense of fear, she realizes her teeth are sharp. Funny. She had thought they were popping out of her gums.

There's something pressing against her, a warmth that isn't burning, not in the same way. The smell of perfume engulfs her, chemicals and alcohol and fake flowers, but underneath is the salt of skin and blood. A softness tucks under Allison's chin. Lydia's hair spills over her chest.

"Get back," Allison says. Her words aren't fully formed, but Lydia must understand. She must, but she stays where she is, tracing little circles up Allison's arms.

"Just another minute," Lydia whispers. "I don't want you to be alone."

Lifting her arm is an exercise in agony, her muscles weighed down like stones to the bottom of a lake. Allison tries to push Lydia off her, push her away, because she won't risk it, can't. Things getting harder to get through, but she pushes. It's so hard to move. Bright sparks crawl inside her skin.

A warmth cups her cheek, brushes her hair aside. The press of Lydia's lips on her temple is a bullet to the brain. For one glorious moment, it eliminates everything else. Her neck is just inches from Allison's face, and she can feel the pounding of her heart like waves washing over her. "I'll be waiting on the other side," Lydia whispers. And then the pressure is gone. It's colder, but also hotter, and the pain blasts through her until its all she knows. Nails lengthening in their beds, skin stretching, ripping, healing instantly. She's more alive than she's ever been, and this is the moment she dies. Light and dark lose their values. The world is the afterburn of the sun.

 

* * *

 

 

It's hard to watch it happen. It's definitely harder to have it happen, but Lydia's been down that road and now its left her here. Watching the teeth sprout from Allison's gums, her brow contort with pain as her face reforms, and her eyes. Well, her eyes stay dark and soft until the very end. They've always been Lydia's favorite thing about Allison, or at least one of many; they're like the woods, deep and brown and warm, occasionally frightening. Lydia likes the frightening times as well, but not like this. Not when the velvet of Allison's wrists is still an echo on her fingertips, when she had her close enough to feel the tremors wracking her body that wormed their way into Lydia's body. Not when the last thing Allison does is look up into her eyes, desperate, terrified, before they glaze over into flat yellow disks.

This isn't how it was supposed to be. She, Stiles and Allison were the human ones, or at least Allison was human and Lydia was her best impression of it, when she wasn't raising the dead. Stiles, well. Stiles dabbled in all sorts of things. Who knew what he was anymore. But Allison, she had been an Argent, a defender of humanity and a paragon of it. She was something to count on.

But another thing to count on was her unfailing sense of self-sacrifice, and in constant contact with hostile werewolves, the Bite was an eventuality.

"What's it like?" Allison had asked one day. "The Bite. Being... whatever you are. All of it."

Lydia had sat back and stared at her carefully. "Rebirth," she'd eventually decided. "You change even when you don't mean to. The world's so different, and you're rushing to keep up."

"I don't envy you," Allison said. "I have a hard time keeping up with the world as it is."

Lydia had shrugged with a smile that wasn't a smile. "The worst of it is just being alone."

Allison's hand was a gentle warmth on her own.

Things had changed since then. Her family had come a long way in developing their ideology since her mother, and Scott had even offered her the Bite, once. But it wasn't what Allison wanted. She liked being human, and Lydia didn't blame her; sometimes she missed it too. But here they are: in Lydia's basement with her parents on a spa package, and the rest of the pack stationed outside in case something went wrong. She'd insisted on being alone with Allison when it happened. Scott had eventually agreed. He knew a losing battle when he fought one.

The rattle of chains dies down to a gentle clink, nothing more than the shift of them with Allison's breathing. Panting might be a better word. Her head is bowed, her long black hair tossed over her face, but Lydia can hear the way the air hisses around the points of her teeth. The change is done. Now comes the fallout.

Lydia slides down the opposite wall and settles on the floor. Allison's head snaps up at the sound, a snarl plastered across the new face she's wearing. This isn't Allison. But maybe it will be. Maybe in a month or two Allison will be standing next to her in the woods after a mission, and her eyes will burn yellow like they are now, her nose wrinkled with the memory of a growl, but it will be her all the same. Maybe Allison would learn to like being that way. Maybe Lydia would learn to like her that way too.

She smiles, even as Allison strains towards her until the chains creak, even as there's not a shred of happiness in Lydia's body. It'll be hours before the moon sets and Allison comes back to herself. The first change is always the hardest. It hollows you out, and then leaves you to try and fill in the holes based on memories of who you used to be. It didn't make you a different person. But it did.

Whoever Allison is when this night is over, Lydia will be ready for her. She'll build her back up herself if she has to. She's had practice. Humanity is something that Lydia would never want anyone to lose. But once it was gone, well. They'd just have to figure it out together.


End file.
